Reviews

Julie Doxsee’s Objects for a Fog Death

Objects for a Fog Death
by Julie Doxsee
Black Ocean, 2010.
104 pages / $12.95  Buy from Black Ocean or SPD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do not think I will respond
with a bevy of clasp holds
to this bezel. A poem, then,
by way of re/view. How groan
she made it look like an accident
the way “Februarying” brought
us lyfe and the eternal year
but then a fog death behind it.1
I always like to die like that like
2                                      .

It was awaiting me, somewhere
in the vs. but I got lulled into it,
one spur of the surreal detail3 .
Sometimes death is the creep-
ing moment where it silently
“overwhelmed over/ night.”
Doxsee’s spaceTime bends to
accommodate the ghosts in the
grins.4 It’s about getting sucked
in by language as breath, dim
light of some skull torch. Even
partial-heards, like “of your breath/
we sleep” summon the soft
hurt. Pert language makes you
wince and fill. If the objects
have echoes5 , I still know they
are in the things: “origami
swan” “sphinxes/in your hands”
“sea-green floor.” These are the
objects that killed me when I read
this book of kills. They stuffed
me smiling into a deerskin box
with just enough room for my
toes.

 


↩ 1.“sullen hikes in the/ ice cream snow” and “snow/ waiting for a large person’s/ angel smash.”

↩ 2. “when the horses went/ hoarse in slow motion.”

↩ 3. “They’re so/ tiny because I/ erase my house/ with a broom.”

↩ 4. “So why do you/ think I’m quiet when/ the water bulges like a howl/ & your fingers undo/ the bouquet?”

↩ 5. “holdable echoes”

 

***

Gregg Murray is an assistant professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College and a contributing poetry editor for The Chattahoochee Review. He has recent poems in Caketrain, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere, and a few others forthcoming from decomP magazinE, LEVELER, and Spittoon. If you are interested in his weird book reviews, see his recent essay on Giorgio Agamben in Continent. as well. Gregg holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota. For more deets—or to contact Gregg—please visit gregorykirkmurray.com

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2 Comments

  1. Adam Golaski
  2. Anonymous

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